India, Aug. 25 -- The rising threat of degradation of grasslands in Maharashtra has prompted conservation experts and members of the State Biodiversity Board to demand setting up of a separate authority for their protection and management with such a request being made with the principal conservator of forests, head of forest force (HoFF).

Grasslands are areas dominated by huge and continuous grass cover and as per the stock analysis carried out between 2020 and 2023 by the forest department, there are around 8,000 hectares of land in scattered form that comes under the grasslands' category. Grasslands are widely spread in areas such as Daund, Baramati and Indapur among others. They are important to both wild herbivores (Blackbuck, Chink...